Helping the arts flourish in the state and connecting with younger generations are priorities
for the next executive director of the Ohio Arts Council.

“We need the arts so our communities can continue to grow culturally in Ohio,” Donna S. Collins
said yesterday. “That quality of life can help keep our citizens here.”

On Tuesday, the council board announced Collins as the replacement for Julie S. Henahan, who
will retire in July after 30 years of service to the state agency, which funds and supports the
arts statewide.

Collins’ salary will be $108,000.

The 54-year-old Columbus native has led two nonprofit arts-advocacy groups: She has served since
1998 as executive director of the Ohio Alliance for Arts Education and since 2001 as executive
director of the Ohio Citizens for the Arts Foundation.

“These groups, like the OAC, work to connect Ohioans to arts and culture,” she said. “Serving at
Ohio Citizens for the last 12 years has afforded me the opportunity to work with the legislature,
arts advocates across the state and the fantastic staff at the OAC to be strategic in our messaging
about the value of the arts in Ohio.”

“We at the council know she will move us to the next level of success for all Ohioans.”

Tom Katzenmeyer, president and CEO of the Greater Columbus Arts Council, said he has worked
closely with Collins during the past

10 months on issues of programming and arts advocacy.

“She is eminently qualified and a great collaborator,” Katzenmeyer said.

Collins experienced the arts while growing up on the West Side.

She joined a church choir, played clarinet, read poetry and visited museums while attending
Starling Middle School and Central High School (the site today of COSI Columbus).

“I really came to love the arts because they were important to my parents, who gave me
opportunities,” she said.

“The quality of your life changes for the positive when you can look at a work of art and
understand history, watch someone dance and be emotionally moved or hear a piece of music that
fills your soul up.”

Collins studied education at Otterbein University in Westerville and communication and child
development at Columbus Technical Institute (now Columbus State Community College). She left
college before earning a degree and raised a family. She is married to Howard Collins, and they
have two sons and two grandchildren. A third son is deceased.

Partly because of her experiences growing up, Collins said, she is especially committed to arts
education.

“We have to do everything we can to supplement arts education with teaching artists in the
classroom and having artists engage with children in after-school activities,” she said.

Collins hopes to build on the council’s strategic plan, completed in December, to create a “new
innovative blueprint” to support the arts during the next decade and thereby help foster economic
development and education statewide.

“That may mean having our staff out in the field, working with artists and building deeper
relationships with arts organizations,” she said.

Come July, her most immediate tasks will be to work within the state budget process on council
funding for the next two fiscal years while guiding the council’s proposal for its next grant from
the National Endowment for the Arts.